Fox In Socks! Dartmouth Names Its Medical School After Dr. Seuss

An imagined new facade for Dartmouth's school of medicine (with apologies to Dr. Seuss).

Adam Cole
/ NPR

Originally published on April 5, 2012 5:04 pm

At the college of Dartmouth, in the year '24There lived a young humorist named Theodor.Though boozing was banned as a crime and a sin,Theo hosted a party with plenty of gin.But then in through the door without even a knockBurst the grinch who stole gin-mas: Dean Craven Laycock.

The dean started shouting. His face turned bright red."Put down your tumbler and listen up, Ted!I'm kicking you out of those clubs that you're in.Your work won't be published at Dartmouth again!"

But Theodor just wouldn't take such abuse --He published again — with the nom de plume Seuss!Well, that name stuck. It's the one he would useFor Green Eggs and Oobleck and Horton and Whos.Folks bought his books for their sons and their daughtersAnd Seuss sent the cash back to his alma mater.

Spring turned to summer and summer to autumn(That whole gin episode was completely forgotten)90 years passed. And then: a great honorFor Dartmouth's most famous, least medical doctorThey've renamed their medical school after himAnd his wife! "It's a tribute," says President Kim*.

But I have a question (and maybe it's strange):With this new name will the school itself change?Will students write poems and skip their examsOr learn to prescribe green eggs and green ham?If your dear father's heart has come to a stopWill your Dartmouth-trained doctor advise, "Hop on pop"?

Millions of Dr. Seuss fans are grateful for his cute pictures and great rhymes, but Dartmouth College is also grateful for his donations.

Dr. Seuss — whose real name was Theodor Geisel (Dartmouth Class of 1925) — liked to share his wealth with his alma mater, where he edited the humor magazine, the Jack-O-Lantern, until he was caught drinking gin.

In return, this week the New Hampshire college officially renamed its medical school "The Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine" in honor of the author and his second wife, a nurse, who is the 90-year-old curator of her late husband's works. (Dr. Seuss died in 1991.)

"Naming our school of medicine in honor of Audrey and Ted Geisel is a tribute to two individuals whose work continues to change the world for the better," says Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim. "Ted Geisel lived out the Dartmouth ethos of thinking differently and creatively to illuminate the world's challenges and the opportunities for understanding and surmounting them."

Although he had no medical training, Dr. Seuss did write one sort of medical tome. It was, in fact, one of his few books for adults, called You're Only Old Once. A book for "obsolete children," it tells the story (circa 1986) of one moderately aged patient's experience going through a physical at the Golden Years Clinic. In typical wry fashion, it touches on everything from an initial "Eyesight and Solvency" test to being "properly pilled and properly billed."

No word yet on whether memorizing The Cat in the Hat will now become a requirement for medical school admission.

*Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College

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